i'm almost done 88 with the genesis plow through, and i'll do 89, but i'm going to flip to "90s" for 90-99, 00s for 00-09, 10s for 10-19 and "20s" for 20-25 and then rewind, but i might be gone by then.

the phil collins hits are instantly recognizable by people of all ages, and most people know the gabriel megahits, and know that gabriel and collins are connected. the bassist also had a couple of big singles, including "all i need is a miracle" and "living years" and that connection is less known. the two guitarists both released widely, but did not make massive singles like that; hackett sold a lot of albums, but not many singles. the keyboard player did not have a successful solo career. the three of them that did focus on single releases (collins, gabriel, rutherford) were ubiquitous in the 80s in a way that only the beatles were previously.

in fact,

According to available information, the only three musicians who have sold over 100 million records both as a solo artist and as part of a band are Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Michael Jackson (Jackson 5), and Phil Collins (Genesis). 

i'm trying to get a point across about the cultural importance, here. i will do this for other important 20th century artists like zappa, puppy, crimson, bowie, nirvana and floyd, but none of them will be as impressive as this in terms of breadth, depth, longevity, scope and raw sales. as a music historian, i have to understand that.

i have a music web project that's currently on hold until i can get my exercise space set back up. right now, somebody is drugging me when i'm sleeping and hacking my raspberry pi remotely, so i have the pi off and the exercise cut until i can control my surroundings again. just a few more months, i expect, before i can get back to doing cardio on the bicycle.

cardio on a bicycle is a type of exercise that decreases body mass and leads to weight loss. i bicycle to stay thin and keep my cholesterol down. getting out of this mess is taking longer than i wanted. the last thing in the world that i would want would be to gain muscle mass or gain weight, so i've avoided any exercise at all while i think i'm being drugged with steroids by these disgusting freaks and will continue to until i'm sure i have the testosterone completely flushed out of my system and i'm able to assert control of things as being back to normal.

i am trying to avoid this issue of trans kids playing sports and i can't. i frankly don't care much about competition, and i would not consider this to be a pressing concern to most transgendered women. what percentage of transwomen care about sports? at all? 10%? nor is the issue of much importance to voters, but it's seen saturation level advertising, and the political establishment is reacting by following through so it can say "look, we won".

so, i've been forced to reflect on something i don't care much about and in the process have developed a different perspective.

i think the broader concern should be america's unhealthy obsession with competition and success in children's games, and that this is in truth merely one manifestation of the broader sickness in american culture around competition and sports. this issue with trans kids playing sports is really the same kind of abuse we see young men routinely incur at the hands of their fathers and increasingly see young women incur at the hands of one or both parents. for too many young people in america today, their worth as human beings is tied directly to their ability to excel at some children's game that is a triviality in the larger scope of existence.

the question that keeps jumping out at me is why the political and academic systems aren't encouraging more healthy attitudes about children's competitions, more generally - ideas about sportsmanship, inclusion and the importance of having fun when you play the game. is a factor in america's obesity rate the attitude it instills about exercise as a competitive process in so many young children? does the way that america approaches exercise as a form of competition exclude and alienate so many people, not just trans people, that they become so mentally damaged and experience so much trauma that they end up dangerously overweight?

i want to see the system promote more co-ed exercise activities that are about co-operating in teams and including and accepting people in the team despite their differences, and not about hypercompetition and the exaggeration of difference as factors to analyze in the course of competition. 

kids should be having fun when they exercise, not be so obsessed about winning that they attack their colleagues over coveted spaces on the team.

when i was a kid, they told me that it didn't matter who won, what mattered was that you enjoyed the activity. there's lost wisdom in that. i would rather refocus on cooperation and de-emphasize competition than kneejerk with a militant trans rights response.

that's what i have to say after thinking about it a little and needing to adjust to this barrage of media. this isn't my fight on it's face, but perhaps it is in abstraction, and i want to side with co-operation in opposition to competition.

again, i don't like that i have to do this, but some people are incredibly hard-headed, in addition to being ignorant and stupid. in fact, i've posted this before.

this is a picture of my franco-italian father and i at my grade 8 graduation, outside of frank ryan middle school in ottawa, ontario in the late spring of 1995, when i was 14:

my dad had a little scottish, a little mikmaq and apparently quite a bit of russian (from an unclear source) in him, but his father's side was overwhelmingly franco-ontarian (with some wonky indigenous ancestry that i was able to sort of prove with a clovis test) and his mother's side was italian. he was, however, an austrian celt in his y-dna, indicating that before he was french he was celtic, and his dna mutated in the alps, likely within the halstatt or la tene culture:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt_culture

in fact, his y-dna (and therefore mine) is an old mutation, making him somewhat of an archaic european cave man, genetically. my dad is in truth what central europeans actually looked like thousands of years ago. i actually have NO neanderthal dna, which is very unusual. it's like <0.1%.

i could not trace his russian ancestry, but it is there. i was able to determine that there was likely an illegitimate child in his grandfather's family. in my opinion, he looks more russian than italian.

his mother was north italian, and the dna test pulled up an affinity to the gotti clan, which is both a large crime family and a marker of germanic ancestry. gotti means "goth", which is an italian slur for "dirty, barbaric german". it indicates some distant swedish ancestry, which is what the dna test pulled up: 10% north italian, <1% sicilian. my grandmother did not have gracile features, but she seems to have been very italian in the roman sense of the word.

he did not have middle eastern ancestry of any sort.

my mother's side is overwhelmingly viking, and i really look more like a swedish/finnish kid here, as i generally did. my mother also appears to have some jewish ancestry on her father's side, but it's distant, like the indigenous mikmaq on my father's side. there's also some suggestion of viking/mikmaq marriages on my mother's father's side at the point of very early contact in the 16th century, in the form of mothers in the genealogy that have non-western names and appear out of nowhere. my mother's father's ancestors were scottish shipbuilders that migrated to nova scotia very early in the colonial period, and (before that) appear to have been vikings that settled in the very north of scotland (moray) and became shipbuilders instead of pirates as they settled. so, you can trace them from sweden to scotland to nova scotia as vikings, pirates and shipbuilders. my mother would appear to be directly descended from aristocratic scottish-viking pirates in the very northern tip of scotland. my mother's mother is finnish/irish.

i used a screenshot of my head for my inri youtube site because it's the earliest picture of me available:

i've also used it for my second class citizens site, as the picture was taken in late 1995 and that is the most appropriate project to connect to late 1995:

https://inrirecords.bandcamp.com/album/second-class-citizens

for some reason, this headshot was misperceived as belonging to an acquaintance of mine from high school named sean, who later sang some demos for me (which i rejected as not what i wanted), by people that apparently knew me from the period and they will not let this go: they are insistent that this is a picture of sean.

this is not a picture of sean, it is a picture of me, as is clearly demonstrated by the above picture. i don't mean to be an ass, but sean did not have a father. it could not have been him, at the least; even if you don't believe it's me, it can't be him. however, it's me, clearly.

all of the pictures on my site are of me, unless noted otherwise, and that is very infrequent. virtually all of the thousands of pictures posted are of me.

i have no motive to post pictures of somebody else. i was in fact a cute kid. i know that.